Author
Topic: My WARN let me down (Read 12670 times)

I guess you don't see this to often but it happend. While attending the event I was having a good time up until the end when I was stuck up to my frame rails in mud. I was already mad at the fact that I was not making it up a steep muddy incline. Well after a couple of attempts I made a slight error and got my tire out of the rut and into the mud on the side of the trail. "Not Good" At this point I knew I was screwed. So I grab my strap and ski (yes ski because if you tried to walk in the ankle deep mud you would bust your butt) to the nearest big tree I could find. Pulled my cable from my still brand new WARN Powerplant (I refer to it right now as a $1200 paperweight) started to do my pull and nothing. The winch died at the start of the pull, not the middle, not the end, but the beginning. So here I am cursing the Warn rep back at the event area, who BTW was no help at all, "way to represent", and still stuck in the mud. With some good winching by my buddy JeepinAl and the use of a tree and strap to hold him up on the hill, the help of my GF who was quick to respond with every direction that was fed to her and the help of my trail guides we got it out. So as directed by the all so wise Warn rep I will call customer service and let them look at my winch over the phone. Meanwhile I have 50+feet of cable wrapped around my bumper.

Sorry to hear that you had problems with your winch, and the rep respresenting Warn was no help.

Maybe Marti can mention something to them on a follow up call after the event. I know Marti put a lot of work into organizing this event, and she can take this info back to a vendor about the representation that they sent to the event.

Im my group we had had to use a winch one time, the hill on the Turner Mtn loop after the rain shower on Saturday. It was slick. It was, YES, a Warn Porwer Plant winch. We got the controller and cable all hooked up, he hit the button to take up the slack..... and click....nothing. He hit the button a few times, for both directions, and it did come to life and work. The solinoids were clicking but, it wasn't running the motor, but at least it did work after a couple of minutes.

How new is the warn? Besides the initial winding of the cable, have you used it any? I've had two winches personally and three others in our club fail during the first couple of pulls. Tapping the winch and exercising the switch back and forth a bunch of times generally starts the winch working again. After this initial failure, none of the winches has posed a single problem after years of use. Careful checking on two of the winches confirmed it was not a power or relay issue. My only guess on the problem is that the brush'es have had a chance to wear in and the winches just happened to stop in just the right spot for the non-warn brushes not to make proper contact.

I did learn something good at the Toyota Trail Team winch seminar from the Warn Rep. If you spool out your winch 10 feet and respool it once a month you will never have any corrosion of your brushes or solenoid contacts. Good information and was worth attending the seminar just for that.

Don't hold anything against the rep. He is not allowed to guess as to the problem. I work for an equipment mfgr myself and you don't want someone ruining there warrenty by offering them assistance then it not working. It's all legal crap. Warn has alway's taked care of me even when my controller went bad. give em a call.

Chris,I am sorry to hear that the powerplant did not work for you. Do you remember which representative that you talked to? If you could let me know that would be great. There were two representatives from Warn at the event and one of them had been with the company for only nine days. He was at the event for training.

I am sure that Warn will help you in any way that they can if you contact the corporate office. If you have any trouble at all let me know and I will be happy to call them and see what I can do to help.

I talk to the corporate offices at Warn on a regular basis and they are a great company. They are always very helpful and I am sure that if you contact them they will do all that they can to resolve the situation.

Thank you for coming out this weekend and I hope that you had a good time otherwise.

If you are in the Richmond, VA area there is an authorized service center just south of Petersburg. I took an M8000 to them and they took real good care of me. It worked great to pull my little Jeep pickup up that same hill on the Turner Mt. lower section.

Chris,I am sorry to hear that the powerplant did not work for you. Do you remember which representative that you talked to? If you could let me know that would be great. There were two representatives from Warn at the event and one of them had been with the company for only nine days. He was at the event for training.

I am sure that Warn will help you in any way that they can if you contact the corporate office. If you have any trouble at all let me know and I will be happy to call them and see what I can do to help.

I talk to the corporate offices at Warn on a regular basis and they are a great company. They are always very helpful and I am sure that if you contact them they will do all that they can to resolve the situation.

Thank you for coming out this weekend and I hope that you had a good time otherwise.

ThanksMarti

It was the guy that had been with the company not the guy in training. I sent Warn an email:

I received a 12,000pound Powerplant for Christmas. I have used it a total of 3 times since installed on my Jeep. On the 3rd time when I needed it most it just stopped working at the start of a pull. I was in mud up to the frame rails, so while the mire factor is added into the weight of the pull it should not have taxed the winch to the point where it would overheat. I spoke to the Warn Rep at the event staging area and he said it was a thermal switch (other than that he was no real help, I don't think he did a good job representing such a big name). I tried to wind in the 50+feet of cable that is wrapped around my bumper with no pressure on it and it shut down again last night. I have bought 2 other Warn products since the winch, the plumbing kit for OBA and a 2.5gl tank which I have mounted in my Jeep. I have to say that the only thing that has not let me down so far has been the tank. The fittings in the plumbing kit have not held up and I had to go to tractor supply and build all my air lines. I need to get some direction on how to fix my winch.

If they do not respond I guess I will have to give them a call. It just makes me mad that there has been about $1400 invested in their products over the past 4 months and so far I have not been impressed.

Well I have not received a response to the email I sent to Warn, so I called them today. The guy I talked to was nice enough but he wanted me to ship my winch to Pittsburg to be repaired. I know that some of you guys can go out and drop a couple grand on your Jeep and not even think twice, but me being a budget wheeler has to keep track of what I spend. So spending $1200.00 for the winch was enough for a couple months and now they want me to spen another $100 or so to ship a winch that I just bought do not play well with me. I told him that the rep at the event said that Warn could just ship me a new Thermal Switch since that is what is supposed to be the problem. The customer service rep took my mailing address and said that would be no problem and he would call down to his warehouse and get it sent out.

Well, after talking to Kalani with Warns Technical Support I came to find out some info that was very helpful. It seems that with this winch and the way it is set up the compressor runs in the air mode and in the winch mode. So that means if you have an OBA sys plumed in you still need a way to be able to unhook it from the compressor when you are winching. As someone pointed out in the Rubicon board I would have known that if I had read my owners manual I would have known it. But what fun would that have been So as it turns out mine was building to 100 psi and shutting down. I am installing a quick release so that this never happens again.